Cable television systems (CATV) were initially deployed so that remotely located communities were allowed to place a receiver on a hilltop and then use coaxial cable and amplifiers to distribute received signals down to the town which otherwise had poor signal reception. These early systems brought the signal down from the antennas to a “head end” and then distributed the signals out from this point. Since the purpose was to distribute television channels throughout a community, the systems were designed to be one-way and did not have the capability to take information back from subscribers to the head end.
Over time, it was realized that the basic system infrastructure could be made to operate two-way with the addition of some new components. Two-way CATV was used for many years to carry back some locally generated video programming to the head end where it could be up-converted to a carrier frequency compatible with the normal television channels.
Definitions for CATV systems today call the normal broadcast direction from the head end to the subscribers the “forward path” and the direction from the subscribers back to the head end the “return path.” A good review of much of today's existing return path technology is contained in the book entitled Return Systems for Hybrid Fiber Coax Cable TV Networks by Donald Raskin and Dean Stoneback, hereby incorporated by reference as background information.
One innovation, which has become pervasive throughout the CATV industry over the past decade, is the introduction of fiber optics technology. Optical links have been used to break up the original tree and branch architecture of most CATV systems and to replace that with an architecture labeled Hybrid Fiber/Coax (HFC). In this approach, optical fibers connect the head end of the system to neighborhood nodes, and then coaxial cable is used to connect the neighborhood nodes to homes, businesses and the like in a small geographical area.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a digital return path 100 of a prior art cable television system that uses conventional analog return path optical fiber links. As shown, analog return signals, which include signals generated by cable modems and set top boxes, are present on the coaxial cable 102 returning from the customer. The coaxial cable 102 is terminated at a node 110 where the analog return signals are converted to a digital representation by an A/D converter 112. The digital signal is used to modulate an optical data transmitter 114 and the resulting optical signal is sent over an optical fiber 106 to a hub 120. At the hub 120, the optical signal is detected by an optical receiver 122, and the detected digital signal is used to drive a D/A converter 124 whose output is the recovered analog return signals.
The analog return signals present on the coaxial cable 102 are typically a collection of independent signals. Some of these independent signals may have high peak values and some of the signals may be low level signals. To detect the low level analog return signals and to accommodate the high level analog return signals at the same time, an A/D converter with a large number of bits (e.g., a 10-bit A/D converter) is typically used in the node 110. In the United States, because the analog return signals are in the frequency range of 5 to 42 MHz, the sampling rate of the A/D converter is typically about 100 MHz. A 10-bit A/D converter operating at a sample rate of 100 MHz will output data at a rate of 1 Gbps. Therefore, optical transmitters and the optical receivers in an CATV optical link must be capable of transmitting and receiving optical signals at 1 Gbps or at a higher rate. Naturally, the costs of such high-speed optical equipment are high. Limits on the bandwidth of the optical equipment also restrict the number of analog return signals that can be bundled together for transmission on the same optical fiber.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a system and method for transmitting digital data on the CATV return path at a rate that is lower than a full rate without significant loss of performance.